Mark Madness

Mad Dog.

Or in Spanish, if you prefer, El Perro Loco.

A fifth-grade gym teacher was the first to tag Mark Madsen with the nickname, a nod to his last name and the ferocious way the kid attacked the playground.

It has followed Madsen ever since, mysteriously showing up in Spain during his two-year Mormon mission, greeting him when he arrived at Stanford as a 20-year-old freshman, then tagging along to San Antonio last season when the Cardinal bulled its way to the Final Four after Madsen’s bellowing dunk against Rhode Island.

“Somehow, someone just knew,” Madsen said. “Even on my mission, in Spain, people found out about it. They would just say, ‘Mad Dog.’ In English.”

There are players other teams love to hate. But Madsen, you’ve got to admire.

“He’s the leader and the heart of the Stanford basketball team,” said UCLA Coach Steve Lavin, who takes the No. 9-ranked Bruins into Maples Pavilion against the No. 6 Cardinal tonight for the second meeting of the season.

“He just has an incredible spirit on the floor that’s so contagious,” Lavin said. “The way he plays under the basket and just dominates the lane at both ends of the floor, he’s like a classic Green Bay Packer or an old 49er tough guy.”

Madsen has acquired quite a reputation in his three seasons at Stanford. (Sorry to remind the rest of the Pacific 10 Conference, but at 23, he’s only a junior because of his mission, and he’ll be back next season after Arthur Lee, Kris Weems, Pete Sauer and Tim Young are gone.)

He is just about everybody’s favorite, from the students’ rowdy Sixth Man Club to the legion of interviewers who come away so taken with a 6-foot-9, 235-pound power forward who just might be the most engaging player in college basketball.

There’s the story of how Madsen lives in Casa Zapata, the Chicano theme house at Stanford, simply because it sounded interesting.

“It’s actually really a diverse group,” he said. “It’s probably 50% Chicano or Latino, and the other 50% are just a mixture of white, black, Asian. It’s just a great place. Everyone asks, ‘To get in the dorm, do you have to speak fluent Spanish?’ and I say, ‘You know, no.’ Most people in there speak no Spanish, to be honest with you. Maybe a table at lunch will speak Spanish every once in a while. But there are just a lot of really neat people there.”

Then there’s the 15-page freshman paper Madsen wrote on a couple of notable 20th century athletes.

“Basically, I kind of compared and contrasted Jackie Robinson and Dennis Rodman,” he said. (Yes, that would take at least 15 pages.)

“I tried to do it in an objective way, just on the role that athletes had on society in general, especially on youth.

“Look, I love the way Dennis Rodman plays the game. I don’t admire some of his off-the-court shenanigans, kicking the cameraman, the cheap shots you see from time to time. He doesn’t seem like a complete team player in a lot of ways. But I love the way he rebounds. He’s the best rebounder I’ve ever seen.

“Jackie Robinson, I looked at how he used his influence to bring about change in society and break down stereotypes. In my opinion, that was only possible through sports, to accomplish what he did during that period of time.”

The litany goes on. There was the time Madsen broke a backboard in practice last season, then picked up about 20 shards as souvenirs he keeps in his locker.

“The truth of the matter is, I didn’t even score on the play,” he said. “I went up for a tip, but the ball went in and I just had to hang on the rim because I was off balance, and it shattered. But I take credit for it.”

There’s his interest in the stock market. The son of a vice president at Goldman Sachs, Madsen was in fourth grade when he told his father he thought it was time he invest his $150 in birthday money in the market.

“Now, taxes are such a pain, I’ve got to get an accountant,” he said. “It’s so confusing. It took me, like, two days to do my taxes last year with the capital gains changes.”

It’s clear enough Madsen is from a privileged background. Yet in an age when so many players act as if so much is owed them, he plays like he is entitled to nothing, going after rebounds like, well, like a Mad Dog after a hunk of meat.

He scores 13 points a game and pulls down eight rebounds, leading the Cardinal in both categories. He plays so hard, with such bruising strength, that UCLA’s Travis Reed calls him “the strongest player in the Pac-10, hands down” and probably one of the strongest in the country.

And yet he doesn’t play dirty and has fouled out only once this season.

“A tremendous, physically dominant player--and averages less than two fouls a game,” said Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun, whose team found a way to wrap up almost every Stanford player except Madsen last Saturday. “He weighs 236 pounds and he’s so smart.”

And when he gets to the free-throw line, he’s so achingly flawed, making only 56% of his shots--including some costly misses in the loss to Connecticut.

“At one point in the Washington State game, I was 0 for 6 from the free-throw line,” Madsen said. “I was feeling horrible. And a few of the guys from the Sixth Man Club yelled, ‘Don’t worry about it, we still love you, keep playing hard!’ That felt great.”

Nobody gets a closer look at how hard Madsen plays than Jarron Collins, the sophomore from Harvard-Westlake High in North Hollywood who goes against him every day in practice.

“He’s a tremendous competitor,” Collins said. “He doesn’t give up. He truly earns his nickname Mad Dog every time he plays. He goes after every single rebound.

“His best asset is his heart, and the way he works for position. He has great leg strength. I’ve run into a lot of physical players, but none of them had his expertise, his technique establishing position. Once he gets down in the paint, there’s no moving him.”

Madsen recalls Antonio Reynolds-Dean from Rhode Island as one of the most physical players he has faced. Kevin Freeman from Connecticut, Dan Gadzuric and Jerome Moiso get a nod too.

“Gadzuric from UCLA, he’s good,” Madsen said. “Moiso, when I saw him, I’m like, this kid is skinny. On film, he just looks like a twig. I’m like, come on man, you can’t be playing in the Pac-10 at this weight. But I went out there and he was strong. Really strong.”

Moiso only laughed.

“I try to match with him and he turns it into a wrestling match,” Moiso said. “I have to try to use my quickness.”

There is the battle of the boards, and then there is the battle on the scoreboard, Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery occasionally has to remind Madsen.

“I think he sometimes gets caught up in the physical part of the game because people want to match up with him that way,” Montgomery said. “Sometimes he loses sight of the basketball game going on and that he needs to help us.”

He has never helped more than in the NCAA tournament last season, when he averaged 15 points and 12 rebounds. Despite a bit of a midseason lull, Stanford is readying for another run.

“You get to the NCAA tournament, it’s just a battle, the refs essentially call no fouls and you really have to earn everything,” Madsen said. “‘You have to have an attack mentality on offense, because if you go and post up passively, or drive the lane passively, it’s over. There are guys out there who will just eat you up. There are guys out there just waiting to block your shot, knock you off balance.”

There are guys like Madsen, in other words. They call it March Madness. Is there any better time of the year for a Mad Dog?

Staff writer Scott Howard-Cooper contributed to this story.

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Tonight

UCLA at Stanford

7:30, FSW2

ROBYN NORWOOD

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